Writer Post – Fall Has Arrived
It’s a new season. Fall is upon us. And as I started this blog post – twice – today, the only thing I came up with to write about was…television. I’m a TV watcher. I am. I grew up with television. I have professional “heroes” that are mostly television writers and creators. I even earned a Radio-TV-Film degree so I could take screenwriting classes in college. TV and film are completely different creatures when it comes to writing, and I’m glad I’ve learned to do both – screen and prose, because they have their uses cross-culturally – and I don’t mean – necessarily – fan fiction.
Some of the skills television has to offer a writer just from the experience of watching it are character dynamics and pacing. I still endeavor to write a Love/Hate relationship that resonates as well as the Spock/McCoy relationship or the Lando/G’Kar relationship in Babylon 5 (and yes, I know part of that comes from the chemistry of the actors – but there’s a good deal of writing that brings that out). You can tell when the show’s writers “get” what the characters are supposed to do, and you can tell when those writers have written a particular episode.
I’m a fan of the NCIS shows – both of them. I prefer the original – though the plots can be quite predictable, I watch it more for the relationships between the characters more than the Crime Fighting. NCIS: Los Angeles has always been more flash/bang than character driven – but done with humor. Except for this week’s episode, “Borderline”, which showed a lot more skill with the snark factor and complexity in the packing and character development. It was written by the show’s creator, Shane Brennan, which makes sense – Mr. Brennan developed the characters, created them, and gave them life, he would have a solid handle on them.
But one of my new favorite, “wish I could write that” show is CASTLE. The first season managed to surprise me with twists to the stories. The characters are hysterical – even if so very televisionized (how writers are portrayed on television is so glorified that it makes me laugh) but in a light-hearted way. I get more strange little plot bunnies from one-liners between the supporting cast than I can keep track of.
However, as with book series that go on forever with no real ending in sight – or without something happening, I’ve also become very bored with shows. We don’t watch GREY’S ANATOMY or PRIVATE PRACTICE anymore because we lost interest. The shows kept doing a lot of the same things over and over again but without going anywhere with them – which in a procedural, episodic show like NCIS or CASTLE you expect that, but from a more serialized show, it gets stale.
What’s the point of all of this? Wish I could tell ya. No, really, when you watch shows with a moderately critical eye to structure and character, a normally mindless activity can really come back to help you with your writing – not that there’s anything wrong with turning off the mind every so often and just having fun. Writers need that too, but if you can take what rings true to you in your favorite shows and work to incorporate that into your own writing, it can only make it stronger.